Next version of Samsung tabS which will obviously have Spen included

Well, for one thing they could make the experience of their Office software reasonably equal over the different platforms. I recently wrote a 25 000 word article in Word. Keep it in OneDrive and work on it on the SP3, or iPP, and sometimes even small corrections on a Galaxy Note 10.1. It all works very smoothly. When everything is finished I like to edit it with a stylus on my Toshiba Encore Write 2. In order to save precious storage I removed the Word 2013 and replaced it with Word Mobile from the Windows Store. Well, guess what, MS has removed all editing functions from that version without an Office 365 subscription. I have no problem using the Mobile version of Word on my iPad or Android, and on my SP3 I have the Word 2013 Desktop version. In essence I'm now shut out of my Encore if I want to edit a document. WTF Microsoft?

It feels like they are trying to force me into an Office 365 subscription. Guess what, a lot of people don't like to be forced into anything.

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i think they can put a limitation/restriction on hours or frequency of usage of premium features. But most of them should be available to all users. I am glad that good stuff like one note is free. and Adobe too has a pretty functional version of pdf free. Infacrthey can put up onetime fee for usage of a premium features. For example, i do not have any problem for paying, Adobe per page for indexing or ocr services. But they want me to buy a whole month or year of creative cloud subscription.

As a result, if i want to OCR these 600 pages for one single time. Just one single premium feature which i want to buy just once, for that they want me to buy a combined subscription of AcrobatDC, photoshop, light room, and what not. that doesn't even make sense. Also, if the only premium feature that i use often is OCR, then allow me to but a monthly/Yearly subscription of OCR capability alone.

My first experience with Windows in a while (8 years) has shown me that WRT Microsoft gear, upgrading their pen tech is the least of their worries. The OS itself is a giant heaping dungheap. The underlying design ethos for the OS is sound, but the execution is woefully bad, and the bloat is unbelievable. Their inability to get a simple thing like sleep mode right is emblematic of the problem with their OS as a whole. Needs a complete lean-and-mean rewrite from the ground up.

My first experience with Windows in a while (8 years) has shown me that WRT Microsoft gear, upgrading their pen tech is the least of their worries. The OS itself is a giant heaping dungheap. The underlying design ethos for the OS is sound, but the execution is woefully bad, and the bloat is unbelievable. Their inability to get a simple thing like sleep mode right is emblematic of the problem with their OS as a whole. Needs a complete lean-and-mean rewrite from the ground up.

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I think it's their bussiness/enterprise customers who are keeping them from Software progress on the OS. I dont blame them, they havevtried i twice, Windows RT and then Windows 10s. I wish i can simply simply say that they were ahead of their time, but thatbwont be true, as Windows 10S is a recent phenomenon. They simply have an ancient code that is resource consuming. And only a rewrite can solve it.

Still that's no excuse for bad pen technology, they are not even in the same department, they probably have seperate fundings. Microsoft gas bought and let go of companies like Nokia before. They can do same with the NTrig. All that Microsoft pen protocol stuff that's all #$$@#, if ur pen is bad.

Samsung Software is criticised so much for bloatware, but bad OS, doesnot stop them from making the best hardware in the world. Microsoft just has no excuse for their bad pens and flickering screens. I do not even mind their flickering screens. I just want a workable pen.

Those who need a pen based phones have no option but to buy Note8 despite it's bad software. Microsoft does not need to make the complete best allrounder product. All they need is a product that is indispensable and irreplacable for many, despite it's flaws. None of the Surface device have offered that, for many years Windows was the only product that was that product, But now it's not. Not even for bussiness. When IBM changes to MacOS that is an statement in itself.

My first experience with Windows in a while (8 years) has shown me that WRT Microsoft gear, upgrading their pen tech is the least of their worries. The OS itself is a giant heaping dungheap. The underlying design ethos for the OS is sound, but the execution is woefully bad, and the bloat is unbelievable. Their inability to get a simple thing like sleep mode right is emblematic of the problem with their OS as a whole. Needs a complete lean-and-mean rewrite from the ground up.

Realistically most people are already locked into the Windows ecosystem because of Word, Excel, and proprietary software and hardware that only run on Windows. They'd buy anything as long as it runs Word and a modern internet browser.

What I would like to see in the premium end is pretty much what you said. 120Hz-240Hz pen polling, 100% Adobe RGB / DCI-P3 color gamut coverage, delta-E under 3 color accuracy, 10-bit color, power-saver modes that don't absolutely suck (I'm looking at you, Intel auto-brightness), and control over updates (I already have them set to manual with Group Policy, but I shouldn't have to do it through Group Policy instead of flicking a switch on the Windows Update notification).

The thing is, I mostly use opensource, and I only have one pair of apps I need to run which aren't opensource / have an opensource equivalent (as well as Freehand, but that also is cross-platform) --- but the hardware form factors on the Apple side of the house are quite limited. It kills me that the highwater mark of my computing experience was a NeXT Cube paired w/ an NCR-3125 running PenPoint, and that the most reasonable option to my Samsung Galaxy Book 12 which I can come up w/ is an iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, and Mac Mini paired using AstroPad.

Seriously wondering if I shouldn't consider the flip side of that latter: A Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 paired with an Intel Compute Stick or something similar --- are there any decent programs like AstroPad for Android to control a Windows machine?

Samsung Galaxy Book 12.0 w/ Staedtler Noris Digital Stylus (replacing a Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10, which replaced an Asus Vivotab Note 8, which replaced a ThinkPad X61t, a Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4121, an ST-4110, an ST-2300, a Point 510, a Newton MessagePad 100, a ThinkPad 755c and an NCR-3125 (which was donated to the Smithsonian by the guy I sold it to))

Samsung just released a new version of the Chromebook Plus, which has moved to the Y series Celeron cpu and is 16:10 now(vs the 3:2 on the old Plus and current Pro models) at a $500 for a base model. HP Chromebook X2 2in1 also looks good too for the price, especially since it has a 8th gen Core M. A part of me is tempted due to the simpleness of Chrome OS. If MS could make Windows a bit more efficient that could help sway me back. That and make a 10-11in Surface using Core M cpu, or even the Y series Celeron, full size usb port, usb-c for charing, & 10 hours of battery life. My S3 is great, but it's slowly going down the hill. I get 5 hours of battery life these day, charging isn't consistent, and Windows USB drivers crash below 40% of battery life, which forces me to restart the computer because the type cover isn't being recognized.

I've been Windows free for a few months now, but still in Microsoft's ecosystem somewhat. All my notes will always be in OneNote. I finally gave in and got a big iPad for SmartMusic, Forscore, and other studio and performance related tasks. But my notetaking needs are straightforward enough that the Android and iOS versions of OneNote are good enough. Everything else I do is either cloudable or covered by Android apps, so my Chromebook plus is doing the job for home stuff and the iPad covers work stuff. I could aaaaalmost make it work with one or the other exclusively, but SmartMusic's web version is no good and I keep running into little things here and there when I try to use just the iPad.

I also have Samsung tablets in nearly every size now for notetaking. I have the 12" Samsung Chromebook, the 9.7" tab a with spen, an aging but still functional note 8.0, and now a note 4 that I'm using as a phone for now.

I don't know that there's really anything that would push me back into windows. If the right hardware came along and it happened to run windows, I suppose I'd go for it. But for now, I'm good. If anything, I've been thinking of getting one of the new cheap iPads that works with the pencil for when I don't need the big screen but I do want smartmusic, but I don't like the way the pencil writes as much as I like all my spens.

The thing is, I mostly use opensource, and I only have one pair of apps I need to run which aren't opensource / have an opensource equivalent (as well as Freehand, but that also is cross-platform) --- but the hardware form factors on the Apple side of the house are quite limited. It kills me that the highwater mark of my computing experience was a NeXT Cube paired w/ an NCR-3125 running PenPoint, and that the most reasonable option to my Samsung Galaxy Book 12 which I can come up w/ is an iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, and Mac Mini paired using AstroPad.

Seriously wondering if I shouldn't consider the flip side of that latter: A Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 paired with an Intel Compute Stick or something similar --- are there any decent programs like AstroPad for Android to control a Windows machine?

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parallel space, will let you do that, it supports spen input, but you wobwo get fancy stuff like pressure sensivity or tilt, be prepared for expected lag. It's precise but slow. Also, being primarily a remote desktop app it is an overkill for Astropad kind of functionality.